China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005

During the three decades that followed the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), many scholars explored the impact of high fertility on economic development.Nelson (1956) suggested there would be a low-level equilibrium trap for underdeveloped countries, namely a stable equilibrium level of per capita income at or close to subsistence requirements; cycles of poverty could then result due to stagnation of per capita investment as population grew rapidly, even though the capital stock accumulated.Coale and Hoover (1958) pointed out that extra births under high fertility would engulf the total product.A period of two to three decades of reduced fertility would result in fewer dependents and less of the total product assigned to consumers, and thus a higher average economic level.This was treated as a classic theory and a solid foundation for controlling birth control.In order to prevent per capita GNP from declining, three percent of total GNP would have to be invested in fixed capital for each percentage point increase in population (United Nations 1971).Many studies were devoted to the negative correlation between high fertility and economic development.These studies generated interest in the need for a population policy and the optimal design of such a policy (Birdsall 1977).With the publication of The Population Bomb (Ehrlich 1968) and The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), a sound population policy received even stronger advocacy.Even though China, the world's most populous nation, was estranged and cut off from the outside academic community, it experimented remarkably with its fertility.Tyrene White's 2006 book, China's Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People's Republic, 1949Republic, -2005, is a very ambitious effort to elucidate the vicissitudes of this experiment with birth planning after the founding of the PRC.Based on reliable documentary evidence and numerous interviews with Chinese citizens, grassroots cadres, and officials, White examines the course of the long campaign that was premised on the radical idea of engineering fertility and rationing children through the use of strict birth limits.She illuminates why and how China could undertake such an unpopular policy of transforming a voluntary birth control program into a mandatory program and, most importantly, describes how such a program could survive and be intensified.The 297-page book includes nine chapters, as well as references and indexes.In the introductory chapter, entitled "The Collectivization of Childbearing," White presents the focus of the book, namely, why the Deng Xiaoping regime chose population control and such a strict rationing method, as well as the means of enforcement, and the state's imperviousness to peasant resistance.The author explains her choice of the term "birth planning" rather than other possible terminology.The second chapter explores the origins of birth planning before 1960 under Mao's regime.In the mid-1950s, even though the anti-natalist policy was adopted, with Zhou Enlai and others instituting a program and plan, it was not strictly implemented without Mao's personal endorsement.Chapter 3 is devoted to the transition from loose birth control during the Great Leap Forward period and the Cultural Revolution under Mao's regime to the strict birth planning under Deng's regime.In chapter 4 the author presents a vivid picture of "Historical Studies on Mortality," special issue, Canadian Studies in Population 39, no.3-4 (2012): 142-144.

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